You know what? I get it. I really do get the outrage over a Minnesota dentist’s $50,000 vanity kill of Cecil the Lion. With elaborate measures in place for his protection, the dentist finished Cecil off with a rifle after ineptly wounding him with a compound bow, which left the animal bleeding for days as the intrepid hunter and his professional guides tracked it down. Then he hacked off the beast’s head so he could take it home and mount it in his study.

A fair fight, if you please! A man-versus-beast, put-your-life-on-the line, kill-or-be-killed sort of encounter with the wild. That is what we imagine big game hunting to be: an extreme sport for those who crave killing a beast that at least has a realistic chance of killing them (the mortally sinful nature of such daredevil sports aside). Or, more nobly, the defense of people against a predator on the loose in a human community. But not this mode of hunting: an elaborate Disney World-style thrill ride, the illusion of danger in a cocoon of safety with a moneyed vulgarian’s ultimate souvenir waiting at the end. Lured into the open with tasty bait, Cecil, a celebrity lion used to friendly relations with humans in the Zimbabwean wildlife preserve from which he was lured, walked cooperatively into the hands of his killers.

You know, there are times when I wish the real world were less like satire. I wrote the following fictional news piece as a joke with a friend, a fellow journalist, on Facebook as we were anticipating (still waiting, by the way) the official response from the USCCB on the ongoing revelations of the Planned Parenthood videos.

The appalling ghastliness of the videos revealing the world’s largest abortionist organisation’s baby-parts business, I felt, made the usual bland, boilerplate, bishopspeak rhetoric seem even more absurd and outrageous than usual. We were having a good (though somewhat grim) laugh, lowering, en-blanding and enfeebling the tone with each revision. Sorry if it seems an odd way of relaxing. Gallows humour is a well-documented phenomenon among journalists:

What do you think the Catholic Church, that great representation of Christ’s body on earth, in Chicagoland is up to these days?

If you guessed implementing and then bragging about implementing the EPA’s Energy Star program, you were right. Congratulations.

Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich is juiced about all things global warming that are happening in and around the Catholic Church these days. Now I don’t mean to single out this man, because he is one of many with similar views, yet his Excellency has been public about his exhortations. In an op-ed to the ChicagoSun-Times he tells us how joyfully he looks forward “to benchmarking and tracking” the “energy, water, and emissions performance” of the facilities under his care.

Dozens of Christian protesters gathered in Detroit, Michigan, on Saturday to denounce the unveiling of a bronze nine-foot, one-ton goat-headed statue of Satan called the Baphomet monument.

The statue was presented by the Satanic Temple, an organization "dedicated to Satanic practice and the promotion of Satanic rights," at an undisclosed location in the city as a security measure. The Satanic Temple kept the site of the unveiling of the huge statue secret, e-mailing the information only to members of the group and others who were previously given tickets to witness the occasion, according to Raw Story.

Have you noticed that gmarriage—government-defined marriage—is legal only in post-Christian nations? Why this is so in a moment, but first a brief review of where we stand.

The Netherlands were the first to pretend that two men (or two women) can be married, making it the law of the land in 2001. Belgium followed close at heel in 2003, with the flight from reality gaining momentum in 2005 with Canada and Spain. As of this writing, there are twenty-four countries mandating gmarriage, with Finland, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States the latest entries.

Several other countries are teetering, like Switzerland, Colombia, and Germany, and there is even growing support in traditionally non-Christian nations, like Taiwan and Thailand, but so far this is only tepid to modest.

On this week’s Vortex, Michael Voris, possibly the most committed critic of the Society of St. X on the Internet today, informs his fans that: 

"From the bogus visions of Medjugorje to the schismatic existence of the SSPX to the mad ramblings of dissidents in seminaries and Catholic universities, Rome rarely slaps down anything. And the problem is that as long as something isn't condemned, the followers or adherents of said issue can say, "Well, Rome hasn't said we're condemned, so we are okay.”

Michael Matt compares the rabid approach to the Society of St. Pius X on the part of CMTV to that of the very mainstream Catholic Herald this week, and asks one simple question: What is Michael Voris really up to?

Even in the very depths of the worst possible of worst-case scenarios of crisis in the Catholic Church, denial is not helpful. The crocodile does not care how tightly we close our eyes as it eats us.

For some time now, with an exponentially growing audience of new and deeply alarmed Catholics, Mike Matt and I have discussed the need to restate the basic points of the Traditionalist position, to locate it in the context of the history of the Church over the last century and our current crisis. To do this, I have been revisiting some old books. Even for someone who read my way out of Novusordoist conservatism and into the Traditionalist position, it can be extremely valuable to review what brought us to this dire condition.